A-M I S-P-EA-K-I-NG C- L- E- AR- L- Y E-N-OU-GH?: An investigation of the possible role of vowel hyperarticulation in speech communication

Jayanthiny Kangatharan , Maria Uther , Lisa Kuhn , Fernand Gobet

Speech aimed at infants and foreigners has been reported to include the physical exaggeration of vowels, that is vowel hyperarticulation. Although infants have been demonstrated to experience hyperarticulated vowels as improved examples of vowel categories, little research has been done on whether vowel hyperarticulation occurs as a result of foreign appearance, foreign accent or as a consequence of looking and sounding foreign. The present study therefore explored if appearance and speech separately affect the native speakers’ hyperarticulation. Sixty White British adult speakers communicated with one of four different confederate groups to solve three modified DiapixUK tasks. Preliminary results might indicate that vowel hyperarticulation may be generalizable as a didactic instrument used to teach language learners. Vowel space for each target vowel seemed to be significantly larger in speech directed to foreign individuals with foreign accent than to foreign individuals with native accent. Future studies will be conducted to ascertain which speech samples help native speakers to understand speech better.

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Jayanthiny Kangatharan, Maria Uther, Lisa Kuhn, Fernand Gobet. A-M I S-P-EA-K-I-NG C- L- E- AR- L- Y E-N-OU-GH?: An investigation of the possible role of vowel hyperarticulation in speech communication. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00811042⟩